Curriculum Column

The American Textbook Council has published a provocative manual
that outlines the shortcomings and assets of history and social-studies
textbooks and offers guidelines to educators who select texts for their
schools.

Gilbert T. Sewall, the director of the council, said he wrote the
64-page book after the council received "urgent'' requests from people
seeking help in choosing textbooks.

Even though America guards a tradition of local--or perhaps
state--curricula, the book points out that a shrinking textbook market
is leading toward a national curriculum, especially for history and
social studies because of the political sensitivity that surrounds
those subjects.

"The cost of developing and selling history and social-studies texts
is greater than in such less polarizing subjects as algebra or
spelling,'' the book says. Consequently, "publishers' reluctance to
invest money in new ... products is likely to increase in the 1990's,
resulting in a smaller field of standard books from which educators can
choose.''

Many of the available textbooks are flawed, boring, or both, the
manual says.

The book notes that some publishers have incorporated the
contributions of previously neglected segments of the population, such
as women and some ethnic groups. But in doing so, the manual says, some
of the texts promote a revisionist history that denigrates or
compresses the Western Europeans and their progeny.

Such superficiality and political sensitivity can result in texts
written in an insipid style, the book concludes.

Copies of History Textbooks: A Standard and Guide are available for
$12 each, prepaid, from the American Textbook Council, 475 Riverside
Dr., Room 518, New York, N.Y. 10115.

As part of her master's thesis, a graduate student at Washington
State University is developing lesson plans for high school and college
students on Brown v. Board of Education and desegregation.

Liza Rognas conceived the idea when she came upon the original legal
documents at a regional facility of the National Archives in Kansas
City, Mo. They had only recently been returned to the government
repository from the courts when she was an intern there in 1992, she
said.

Her goal, in part, is to impart to students of today the emotions of
students of that era.

Ms. Rognas hopes to complete the work by December, then send it for
review to the National Archives and the Southern Poverty Law
Center.

Ground Rules for Posting
We encourage lively debate, but please be respectful of others. Profanity and personal attacks are prohibited. By commenting, you are agreeing to abide by our user agreement.
All comments are public.